Euro 2016: Lille-livered, or Jacking up my ego

The day after the Belgium game, and back in La Rochelle, and I felt better after having something to eat. While I'd spent more time in McNulty's, the Irish bar that organised the coaches to Bordeaux, I decided to try General Humbert's, the bar that had sponsored the YBIG team in the fans game on Friday, for the Munster SHC game between Limerick and Tipperary. The bar was showing the game, but I had a few hours to kill beforehand, so I took the tour of St Nicolas' Tower (the bigger of the two towers) in the harbour, and some of the breath taking views of the city it offered.

Watching Limerick struggle against Tipperary, despite having a one man advantage for the majority of the game, should have dragged me back down, but for some reason, chatting with the other Limerick fans in the bar, and sharing a few words with the Tipperary fans present brought me back to reality.

After a meal in the town centre, I returned to General Humbert's for the France's final group game, against Switzerland, to find a large crowd of French had gathered. This was the first time that I'd seen the people of La Rochelle come out to support their team, and it did make for a great atmosphere in the pub between the French and Irish supporters. Around 12 o'clock, I decided to head back to the hotel but, as I was leaving, I was stopped and asked "Are you the guy who runs the Irish Abroad site?". "err, yeah, that's me", I replied. It was Jack Tuite, a former Irish U19 international who followed my @irish_abroad account on twitter. We shared a few words, I asked him how he was getting on now and he said he enjoyed the updates, even if they can be a bit frequent on matchday! I've only been recognised once before for running the site, and it was a nice ego boost at a time when I had been feeling as low as I can remember about football just 24 hours earlier. So, I stayed in the bar for the mythical "just one more" and left a few hours later feeling much better about myself, the trip, and football in general.

The bartender in General Humbert's had been quite vocal reminding people that night that the train timetables had changed, and anyone leaving on Monday had to arrive to the station an hour earlier to get the coach to Nior, where a connecting train would take them on to Paris - the reverse journey that I had take to La Rochelle almost a week earlier. Since I was not leaving until Tuesday, I didn't know if this change would affect me, so I walked over to the station on Monday after lunch to confirm my departure time to find that the same change had been made to my train and I would need to arrive at ten, instead of eleven the following morning. In the context of some of the other changes I had endured to my travel plans, it wasn't the worst. Leaving the station, I was stopped by a French family who had just driven to the town for directions, only for me to explain that I was Irish, and had no idea where anything was! I had found myself in the same situation - asked for directions by a native - on previous trips to New York, Paris, and now La Rochelle!

I had seen some people going around La Rochelle on segways, and found that it was a service offered by a tour company in the city centre so, on arrival at their offices, was disappointed to find that they were closed Monday and Tuesday, which would be my last two days in the town. However, this meant that I had time to tour La Rochelle's large aquarium instead. If you ever do find your way to La Rochelle, I would definitely recommend the aquarium, it takes about two hours to see it all, with a wide variety of species on view - from clownfish to sharks to jellyfish swarms.

My last night in La Rochelle consisted of watching England struggle to break down Slovakia's 11 man defence while Wales beat Russia on a second screen in a restaurant on the seafront, and a last drink in General Humbert's while TVs buzzed in the background with discussions on the evening's games.

The journey from La Rochelle to Lille was uneventful, save for the earlier departure time. It probably worked in my favour as it mean that, on arrival in Paris, I had more time to get from Montparnasse station to the Gare du Nord. Shockingly, the TGV to Lille was scheduled to leave on time, and was the first of the three trains I had taken in my time in France where I was asked to produce a ticket. I settled into my seat, again with a film I'd been meaning to watch for some time on my tablet and waited to arrive at my destination.

When I had booked my trip in late Februrary/March, Lille had by far the most expensive quotes for hotel rooms, so I had instead decided to book my stay with AirBnB - the first time I had used the service. I had rented a one room apartment not far from the city centre in Lille, met the landlady at the address and left my bags in the room. In truth, it wasn't much to look at, but I was only there for two nights, and cost of the two nights was still cheaper than some of the hotel quotes I had seen for a single night, so what of it?

A friend had arrived in Lille the same day, so we made arrangements to meet up at a tabac (a small French store, selling beer, tobacco and lottery tickets) just off the main square. This allowed me some time to walk up to the fanzone and pick up a few souvenirs from my trip for friends and family. After meeting at the tabac, we encountered again some of the French disinterest in the tournament. Despite the square being full of Irish fans, not to mention some Italians, and a few other nationalities, the tabac had only one small screen in the corner of their window showing the Spain - Croatia game, and it was on mute. Not only this, the picture dropped for about ten minutes just before half time, much to the consternation of the two Spanish girls who were sitting behind us watching the game.

After the game finished, and with my friends leaving to catch the last metro to their hotel, I walked back to the apartment. There was a street party in full swing about two blocks from the apartment. At the top of the street, I was stopped by two French guys, who were looking to hang out with some Irish fans, and I happened to be the first one they had met. I chatted to them in my broken French, and learned they were from La Reunion, the home of French midfielder Dimitri Payet. I told them a good friend of mine is a big West Ham fan, and we're both big fans of the playmaker, so they insisted I try some of the drink they had with them. Normally, I would never accept something to drink in a plastic bottle from someone I had only just met, but the few beers I had in the tabac robbed me of any reluctance, and I swigged it back. I'm not sure what it was, but I can tell you it was orange, and could be used to strip paint from walls. Walking further down the the street, which had DJs with decks and speakers outside the bars dotted along it, I was again stopped - this time by a couple, a French girl, and a Polish guy. I speak a little (ok, very little) Polish, but I was able to tell him my name, and ask him his name in his native tongue. This impressed him enough to offer me a swig of whatever it was he was drinking. For the second time that night I drank something approximating engine cleaner given to me by a complete stranger.

Well oiled, I stopped into one of the bars to drink something that I had actually paid for, and had a good idea of what I was drinking. The place was packed, and I got talking to some Irish, and some French who were there. I didn't realise one of the French girls was deaf, I might have upset her a little. I did try to explain to the other people who were there that she was deaf, and I don't have any sign language. They didn't know her either, but did speak to her and assured me there was no problem.

I only vaguely remember leaving the bar, and waking up the next morning in the apartment realised I had done something I've not done in a long time. I had drank so much I blacked out. I had no recollection of getting from the bar to the apartment. This terrified me. It's bad enough doing it in Ireland, where at least you know where you are, how to get home and have friends around you to help you, but this was another country,  and in city where I could count the number of people I knew on the fingers of both hands.

With a hangover that knew my name, how was I going to recover in time to make it to the Italy game?

Euro 2016 - Travel Sickness, Part Two or "when one train vanishes, another one turns into a bus"

Part One here: When everything that can go wrong on a connecting flight does go wrong

Apart from the game itself, the day of the Ireland-Sweden match was largely uneventful. I made my way to the Eiffel Tower to see the fanzone to find the tower itself only open to tourists, and that the fanzone was on the far side of the tower. With time a premium, I got something to eat at a nearby café, and spoke with some American tourists who weren't really sure what was going on, before meeting some friends and taking the metro to the game. On the metro itself, some light conversation with an Irish man and his Swedish wife resulted in them selling their spare ticket to one of our party who was traveling to the game without a ticket. Irish ladies international Stephanie Roche was two rows down from me at the game, and I got a photo with her after the final whistle, which gave me the strange experience of telling someone I'd never met before that she follows me on twitter!

A day later, and having endured Hercules' first labour in getting to Paris, I figured that the second leg of my journey, a train from Paris' Montparnasse station to la Rochelle (a small seaside town about a 90 minutes drive north of Bordeaux) would be uneventful. But not so.

I arrived about two hours early to the station, both to find the correct platform and to get something to eat. The SNCF had emailed me to let me know that, despite the ongoing strike action my booking was safe, and the train was scheduled to leave on time, which I confirmed on the departures board. The station's relative quiet was periodically broken by striking workers in hi-vis vests with a megaphone to let everyone in the station know their grievances. I got a seat in one of the station's cafés and ordered a sandwich. I got talking to two Irish fans at the table beside me, and sold one of them my spare ticket for the Italy game. A friend of his was due to arrive in France later that week and had no ticket, so after a quick phone call to confirm his interest, I sold him the extra.

With 20 minutes to leave, I wandered over to the platform where the train was still scheduled to leave, and browsed on the free wi-fi until another Ireland fan in the station tapped me on the shoulder, and asked if I was also getting this train to Bordeaux, because it had been taken off the board!

After checking the board to find that, yes, it had been removed, I went to the information desk and found with my broken French that I could take the next train to Bordeaux about an hour later, and get a connecting train at Nior, instead of Angoulême as in my original plans, with the same ticket. Ok, not the worst change of plans I'd had to endure, even at this early stage of my trip, but another inconvenience.

One thing that struck me as odd was that the lady at the information desk was reading this off a printout, not on the screen on the computer at her desk. Working in the realm of realtime information has made me suspicious of printouts for a variety of reasons. How old was the printout? How did she know if it was still valid? Why was France's much-vaunted TGV still reliant on paper?

But the train left on time, with me on it, and I settled into watching one of the films I had added to my tablet before leaving. We arrived in Nior two hours later and followed the signs for the connection to la Rochelle to find it wasn't a train, but two coaches! I got on the first coach, which filled quickly, as did the second, and noticed that several Irish fans had been left standing outside the station. While I was thankful I was not among their number, I did wonder how they would continue on their journey.

The coach wound its way through the French countryside until we arrived at the train station in la Rochelle about an hour later. We were all a little surprised that there were no taxis at the station, but soon they arrived in ones and twos to take the weary travellers to their various destinations. I would learn that my hotel was actually about a 10-15 minute walk away, but after three days of traveling, broken by the self-inflicted stress of an Ireland game, I was happy to get a taxi.

The hotel itself was centrally located, and its owner cheerful with perfect English, so after leaving my luggage in the room, I left for a walk around the city centre (what I would learn is the "old" part of the town) to get something to eat and have a quiet drink.

After another day's travel disrupted by forces outside my control, surely now my issues were at an end? Not at all.

To be continued...